Divine Simplicity, Incomprehensibility, Thomistic Dualism and Biblical Inerrancy

". . . 'The supreme Judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined . . . can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.'  

"Unfortunately the visible churches that have descended from the Protestant Reformation, especially the larger and wealthier denominations, have to a considerable degree repudiated the Bible."

Gordon H. Clark.  What Do Presbyterians Believe?  pp. 24-25.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: (2 Tim. 3:16 KJV)

Recently, I was listening to several YouTube videos on the issue of divine simplicity.  It became apparent to me that the Thomistic doctrine has a problem that Dr. Gordon H. Clark called a dual view of truth.  Most of the advocates of the modernized doctrine of divine simplicity have over-emphasized the transcendance of God to the point that nothing can be known of God's archetypal knowledge whatsoever.  Divine simplicity's most basic assertion is that all that is in God's archetypal being is God himself.  The attributes of God are therefore only identifiable from below or from an ectypal understanding of God. 

The Westminster Confession of Faith does indeed insist that God is not a collection of parts or a composite of parts.  The problem, however, is when these same theologians say that God's mercy and God's wrath are the same thing.  God is love.  (1 John 4:7-8).  Is God's love really the same thing as God's justice and God's wrath?  I don't think so.  But does the doctrine of divine simplicity entail that distinctions cannot be made in God's being without His being a composite of parts?  Dr. Gordon H. Clark defined God as the system of propositions that God thinks.  Within the Godhead or divine essence there are three distinct Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  All three Persons are the same God.  If we take the divine simplicity model too far, that would imply that Cornelius Van Til's view of God as both one Person and Three Persons would not matter.  All that is God is God.  This would entail direct contradictions in the Godhead.

Although God is a simple Being, who cannot be divided into composite parts, does this mean that God cannot be defined?  If so, then we have a problem with Scripture, because it is from the propositions in the Bible that we know anything about God at all.  This raises another question.  Is God incomprehensible?  Before we can answer the question, the word "incomprehensible" must be defined.  Dr. Clark defined the word as immeasurable, not unknowable.  Typically, the neo-orthodox view has it that God is so totally transcendent that He cannot be known except through and existential encounter, not through a rational understanding of information in the Bible:

". . . Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and modernism substituted religious experience for the Word of God.  The neo-orthodox also deny the truth of the Bible and substitute something called an existential encounter.  They fail to tell us how this experience determines the number of the sacraments, the mode of baptism, the principles of church government, or even the doctrine of the Atonement. Without such information controversies of religion can be settled only by majority vote, that is, by the whims or ambitions of ecclesiatical politicians.  No wonder there is talk of church union with Rome.  Without information from God, men are left to their own devices."  

Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  What Do Presbyterians Believe?  The Westminster Confession Yesterday and Today.  1965.  (Trinity Foundation:  Unicoi, 2001).  P. 25. 

Frances Turretin did articulate a distinction between the archetypal and ectypal knowledge of God.  I cannot remember exactly what Gordon Clark said about this distinction, so that will have to wait for another blog post.  However, Clark and Cornelius Van Til had a serious disagreement over whether or not God's knowledge and our knowledge coincide at any single point.  Van Til said no and Clark said yes.  In fact, Clark went further than that and insisted that the Bible is univocally the very words of God in a logical and propositional form.  Van Til, on the other hand, following Turretin and Aquinas, insisted that God's archetypal knowledge and our ectypal knowledge do not coincide at any single point.  Clark, utilizing the illustration of geometry, insisted that parallel lines continue into infinity into eternity in both directions without ever intersecting at any single point.  Following this logic then, there could be no coincidence at any single point between God's knowledge and our knowledge whatsoever.  The implications of a Thomistic dualism, then, would be that the Bible is not really God-breathed or even the Word of God.  It could only be a human book based on human logic and a human existential encounter with God.  In other words, it would mean that only God knows any divine information and this information is known only to God in His archetypal knowledge.

I have even heard Dr. James White say that only God knows what the original autographs say, and God knows this in His archetypal knowledge.  The problem here involves the doctrines of both divine inspiration and biblical inerrancy/infallibility.  If the Bible is merely a human book on the ectypal level, then it logically follows that it could contain errors.  The problem is even worse when we consider the issue of reasoned eclecticism in regards to the textual criticism of both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Even Dr. Richard Mueller has not taken such a strong stance against any interaction between God's archetypal and God's ectypal knowledge:

The issue, here, is a direct reflection of the language of the Reformed prolegomena: the ultimate and therefore perfect archetypal theology is identical with the divine mind—all other theology is, at best, a reflection of this archetype, a form of ectypal theology. Ectypal theology in the human subject (in all systems of theology!) is not only finite and reflective but also limited by human sinfulness and by the mental capacities of the theologian.165 The human author of theology, thus, has little intrinsic authority. If theology is to be authoritative, its source (other than the mind of the theologian) must carry authority with it. That source cannot be the divine archetype, but it must stand in a more direct relation to that archetype than any utterly human effort: the doctrine of inspiration leads, therefore, in many of the orthodox systems, directly to the doctrine of the authority of Scripture.

Muller, Richard A. Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy;  Volume 2: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003. Print.  Page 261.

The point here is that if the archetypal knowledge of God is known only to Him, how could ectypal knowledge be a reflection of what is totally unknowable?  Gordon H. Clark distinguished between God's intuitive knowledge and human discursive knowledge.  He also agreed with the proposition that the noetic effects of sin cause errors in logic and most likely in theology as well.  But is it really true that 2 + 2 = 4 is the same thing as God's love in God's archetypal knowledge?  How do you know? 

Now, as this relates to the issue of biblical inspiration and biblical inerrancy/infallibility, I would like to raise the problem of textual criticism, reasoned eclecticism, and presuppositional apologetics.  I will delve more into this issue in future posts.  However, for now I would like to ask a few questions.  If the original autographs are only a reflection of the archetypal knowledge of God and can only be known through ectypal reflection and condescension to the human level, and if we do not have the original autographs, does it not follow that there are at least two problems with the doctrine of biblical inspiration and biblical inerrancy?  First of  all, if we do not have the original autographs, we are left with either a reasoned eclectical reconstruction of the autographs by way of a fallible "science" of textual criticism, or we are left with an equally reasoned reconstruction of the autographs from the extant Byzantine majority texts.  Thus, both the critical eclecticism and the reasoned Byzantine text reconstruction are based on some form of textual criticism.  Both positions argue that the Masoretic Text of the Old Testament and the Textus Receptus of the New Testament are flawed.  

So that logically means that no manuscript extant today are without error.  How then can a theoretical biblical inerrancy exist at all?  Logically, it must be as unknowable as God's archetypal knowledge.  In that case, Bart Ehrman's argument that the autographs cannot be reconstructed must be true.  James White has argued that the autographs are available in the critical apparatus of the eclectic editions of the Greek New Testament.  But does this not lead to a form of relativism where the informed reader of the critical editions of the Greek New Testament pick and choose which variant is the original?  Absolute truth is unchanging, yet we have a constantly changing series of translations based on an ever-changing eclectic Greek New Testament.   And, as Maurice Robinson has noted, the reasoned eclectic approach often stitches together disparate fragments to produce a text that does not exist in any extant manuscript of any kind.  The options keep changing from one variant to the next in a constant flux of possibilities, which leads to relativism, not certainty.

But is there another option?  Gordon H. Clark proposed that Scripture is the axiom of Christianity.  Without the Bible there is no basis for Christianity at all.  But more about this in a future post.

The Inaugural Meeting of the Reformation Bible Society

Textual Criticism: The New Attack on the Inerrancy and the Infallibility of Scripture

"The fully developed liberal theologian could very well admit that Scripture itself asserts its own inerrancy. But then add that this is just another of the long list of Scriptural blunders. The theologian who has just begun to the edge away from the position of historic Protestantism and still wishes to be known as an evangelical, is more cautious. He is not willing to speak of a long list of Scriptural blunders. He has only two or three difficulties. Two or three insignificant places where the Bible has unfortunately missed the exact truth. But let me point out, with force, that the theological position is the same in both cases." 

"Whether the list of blunders is long or short., both these theologians contradict Christ who said, 'The Scripture cannot be broken.' The liberal and the pseudo­-evangelical both repudiate Christ as well as the Scripture."  Dr. Gordon H. Clark. 

[From a lecture given, "The Inerrancy of Scripture."] The Sermon Audio version is available here:  The Inerrancy of Scripture.]

Westminster Confession of Faith  1:8

The Old Testament in Hebrew, (which was the native language of the people of God of old,) and the New Testament in Greek, (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations,) being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical . . .

Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. (2 Tim. 3:7 KJV)

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: 21 Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen. (1 Tim. 6:20-21 KJV)

The Evangelicals who accept the "science" of textual criticism and who still affirm the doctrine of biblical inerrancy have a major problem.  The problem that should be apparent to everyone is that only the original autographs are the infallible, inerrant and absolutely inspired words of God.  No one is willing to take on this problem honestly.  Instead, what we get are clever dodges and evasive maneuvers.

Translations are not the exact inspired and inerrant words of God. Even the original Reformers and Puritans acknowledged that in all matters of doctrinal dispute we are to appeal to the original languages in the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts behind the text of cross-cultural translations, including English and the many other languages around the world.  A further problem is that we cannot reconstruct the original autographs using modern textual criticism.  I say this because obviously the presupposed axioms of the textual critical methods are unproven starting points which may or may not be accurate to the truth.  In short, textual criticism is a highly subjective and fallible process which is prone to errors of speculation and presumption.

Even the late Dr. Gordon H. Clark was not immune to this problem.  Anyone who has read his commentaries can see that he appealed to the textual critical apparatuses of the critical editions of the Greek New Testament.  But did he continue to follow that line of thought in his later years?  I would argue that he did not; because in his later years, he began to gravitate toward the Byzantine Majority Text as the basis for Scripture translations.  I would argue that he would have eventually come around to the confessional view advocated by the Reformation Bible Society.  Clark insisted that the Westminster Confession of Faith was the best summary of the Bible ever produced.  (See also:  WCF 1:6).

The confessional view basically says that the original autographs cannot be reconstructed, as even most of the modern textual critics, including Bart Ehrman acknowledge.  Evangelicals like James White and Daniel Wallace clearly lost their debates with Ehrman, both of which are posted on YouTube.  You can look them up for yourselves.

So where does that leave us?  James White insists that we can reconstruct the original autographs.  But he is duplicitous and equivocates on this point.  He also insists that only God in His archetypal knowledge knows what the actual canon of Scripture is and what the original autographs contained.  Yet, White loudly asserts that we have the original autographs in the many variants exant today.  This is obviously a contradiction.  Either we have the original autographs or we do not.  We do not.  So any reconstructed edition of the critical Greek New Testament is a matter of scholarly opinion, not an infallible and inerrant reconstruction of the original text of the New Testament.  The same can be said about the Old Testament Masoretic Text, which has problems of its own.

Also, White likes to disparage his opponents as King James Only.  That's basically the fallacy of the abusive ad hominem and gaslighting.  Dr. Jeff Riddle, the Reformed Baptist scholar who heads up the Reformation Bible Society, does prefer the King James Version for public preaching and teaching.  But Riddle is not King James Only because he publicly refutes the idea that any translation is the inspired Word of God.  Riddle affirms that only the original autographs are the inspired Word of God.

The confessional view as advocated by Riddle and the Reformation Bible Society is that the Westminster Confession of Faith and other Reformed Confessions affirm that the Textus Receptus is an accurate and providentially preserved reproduction of the original autographs, while simultaneously acknowledging that the TR is not the original autographs or absolutely an inerrant copy of the autographs.  The TR obviously has some minor variants.  But even the Puritans were aware of these, yet they asserted that all doctrinal disputes were to be resolved by appealing to these Greek manuscripts.  The same with the Hebrew Masoretic text--all doctrinal disputes were to be resolved by these Hebrew texts.

The doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration and the inerrancy of Scripture depends on having a providentially preserved Bible.  The Reformers were content with the Textus Receptus and the Masoretic Text.  We should likewise affirm what the Reformed confessions say, namely that God has providentially preserved the Bible:

VIII. The Old Testament in Hebrew, (which was the native language of the people of God of old,) and the New Testament in Greek, (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations,) being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical;r so as in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them.s But because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, who have right unto and interest in the scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them,t therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come,u that the word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner,w and, through patience and comfort of the scriptures, may have hope.x

r Mat. 5:18. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

s Isa. 8:20. To the law, and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them Acts 15:15. And to this agree the words of the prophets, as it is written. John 5:39. Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me: Ver. 46. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me.

t John 5:39. Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me.

u 1 Cor. 14:6. Now, brethren, if I come unto you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you, except I shall speak to you either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine? Ver. 9. So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air. Ver. 11. Therefore, if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian; and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me. Ver. 12. Even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the church. Ver. 24. But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all. Ver. 27. If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course; and let one interpret. Ver. 28. But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to himself, and to God.

w Col. 3:16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

x Rom. 15:4. For whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning; that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

Westminster Assembly. The Westminster Confession of Faith: Edinburgh Edition. Philadelphia: William S. Young, 1851. Print.